This is my blog. My website is PopCulturePirate.com

Back in February, NPR did a piece on vidders, and while I don’t identify as a vidder myself, I think this article is an interesting look at how the mainstream media is negotiating the issue of talk-back culture creation.

Francesca Coppa, a scholarly writer on vidding said in the article, “I think women are having to supplement mass-media culture with their own ideas…Or fill in the blanks themselves with things they’re not getting from the mainstream culture.”

The history of vidding has been one of skill-sharing among women whereby they learn video editing, web design and photoshop skills using shared resources and footage. The goal is to supplement tv shows with their own story lines and character archs. Vidding is different from remixing in that it is usually uncritical of the source material.

Meanwhile, one of the resources of culture creation, YouTube, is removing both fair use, copyrighted, and original content. I attempted to watch a Jim Cramer/John Stewart clip but it’s been removed from YouTube due to copyright violation on behalf of Viacom. Similarly, many political remix videos have been removed, despite being transformative works protected under fair use.